Supernova SN 2020nlb in Messier 85: two months of coverage – 25 Aug. 2020
Since its discovery, we regularly observed supernova SN 2020nlb in Messier 85, covering its evolution for exactly two months. Now that its observing season has ended, we are pleased to share our lightcurve.
Supernova SN 2020nlb in Messier 85: an image – 25 Aug. 2020.
The image above comes from the average of five, 60-seconds exposures, unfiltered, remotely taken with the “Elena” (PlaneWave 17″+Paramount ME+SBIG STL-6303E) robotic unit available as part of the Virtual Telescope Project. The supernova candidate is indicated by an arrow, in the upper left inset. The sky was bright because of twilight and the target was just 17 deg. high above the horizon: for this, with this extreme image, we closed our observing season for this object.
The transient continued to slowly fade, as expected for a type Ia supernova. We’ve found it in the image above at mag. 14.2 (unfiltered, R-mags for the reference stars from the Gaia DR1 star catalogue). We closely monitored this supernova since its discovery (25 June), covering the rising phase daily and now its decay. Now, Messier 85 is moving into the solar glare, ending its visibility season, so we publish here our SN 2020nlb photometry below.
SN 2020nlb: lightcurve
Those are unfiltered magnitudes (R-mags for the reference stars from the Gaia DR1 star catalogue).
Of course, we plan further follow-up of this object once it will be back in the morning sky.
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